Gregory Stock: To upgrade is human

http://www.ted.com In this prophetic 2003 talk -- just days before Dolly the sheep was stuffed -- biotech ethicist Gregory Stock looked forward to new, more meaningful (and controversial) technologies, like customizable babies, whose adoption might drive human evolution.

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[orlando098]

thanks, I should study the science of it more, but I am aware that we are tantalisngly close to finding ways of greatly extending human life. I am a supprter of the Methuselah Foundation, for example

[Leifthrasir]

As long as this technology is controlled by the public and not privatized. I'd be most comfortable. Other than that I think this is really cool!

[intermender]

The extra chromosome joke was so funny and ironic lol

[Hallibutbouy]

Cant he Understand Nobody can Tell what effects this will have on the rest of humanity and nature at large?

Until we develop from the inside there will be no development at all. More power in the hands of fools is a bad thing. Academic excellence is not a substitute for understanding how to live. Half educated, and not the good half. "You have great power!" "What should I do?" Should we be happy to become more powerful when we are already using our power so badly?

[Hallibutbouy]

Possibly the perfect example of a biologist who has absolutely no understanding of what it is to be a human being.

Who funds most of this kind of research? Pharmaceutical companies and the military. Can either of them be trusted?

Until we realise that everything must be understood as part of the whole we will be like a cancer on this earth. Everything else evolved in harmony with everything else in its time - good life is a whole, not the product of a research lab.

[Hallibutbouy]

Imagine a drug that makes you feel your happy even though you never do the right thing, have no meaningful relationships, have no purpose in life, are surrounded by a concrete and technological environment and live in a society where you are completely busy with meaningless tasks leaving you totally alone.

Human development? No. The only people doing the developing are the biologists, we're just supposed to get our wallets out and buy the version of ourselves we want, no development involved.

[mjl1621]

@47f0 It's constitutional for the post office to exist, just not for them to have a monopoly on mail delivery. The post office has a history of restricting speech (by restricting what types of literature was allowed to be sent), and by imposing fines on private companies who offer a better service at a better price. I'm fine with the post office if it can stand on it's own feet and not restrict private competition. It the private sector can do it better, why not let them.

[jaredgekko]

Genius..... or... Egomaniac???

[47f0]

@getbabydoll - unlike every Christian I have met, I have read my Bible - and I realized it was deceiving me. Nice troll, though. Almost as droolingly moronic as a real Christian post.

[47f0]

@mjl1621 - what utter drivel. The tired "Post Office" meme has been so debunked on so many levels that anyone with half a brain cell should be embarrassed to mention it. To begin with, the USPS was never intended to be a profit mine. It was intended to provide service to every American, and in many cases, the last leg of a UPS or Fedex delivery is the USPS - private enterprise would simply write off many zip codes, just as private enterprise writes off Americans who can't afford health care.

[mjl1621]

@Leifthrasir it's funny you say that. I was thinking the opposite, as long as it's controlled by the private sector I'm comfortable with it. In the governments hands, I don't know; the government doesn't do very many things well. They can't turn a profit with the post office, they've made medicine more expensive and by extension less available. If in private hands it's in the hands of free people, if in the government's hands it's controlled by a ruling class.

[EricTheRed03]

This guy is a noob compared to Michael Merzenich on re-wiring the brain